Color Balance Images in dark room? and - kelvin white balance?

[jbench]

I've tended to color balance/retouch my photos in a room with daylight coming in the windows but I've heard others saying they color balance photos in a dark room. Which is better and why?

I'm retouching product/food photography for cmyk printing.

One more note - I've always set my white balance to 6500 but my new NEC monitor says 5000K for print work. My mac powerbook pro laptop is set to 6500. Any thoughts on this issue?
thanks

 

[Helen B]

We use the SoftProofX system from Quad Graphics because they are our printers. They have set up the system, which is for exactly the type of color correction you are doing, for a 5650 K white point, 160 cd/m2 and L* gamma. It sits in a darkened, neutral-coloured corner of the general office. We use a colour-corrected lightbox and an i1 Pro spectrometer for checking colors against the CMYK soft proofs on the screen.

If your printers offer such an integrated proofing/correction/approval system then it would be worth looking into - at least ask them for advice.

Good luck,
Helen